


as it is (and it is)

by orphan_account



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Bottom Steve Rogers, Bucky Barnes's Metal Arm, Dissociation, Established Relationship, Hopeful Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Hydra (Marvel), M/M, Paranoia, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Steve Rogers Feels, The Matrix References
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-20
Updated: 2018-08-20
Packaged: 2019-06-30 00:59:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15740877
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: which is more likely—waking up in the 21st century not having aged a day or being captured by hydra and dreaming up a world where he has bucky back?





	as it is (and it is)

In the grand scheme of Bucky’s recovery and all the days and weeks and months that go into it, it’s almost easy for Steve to forget that he isn’t doing well. There just isn’t time to remember, very few instances where his brain has enough energy to remind him that he’s woken up sixty years in the future, that the two great loves of his life are either dead or traumatized and everyone else is gone as if they were never there at all. It becomes background noise, takes a backseat to making sure Bucky feels safe, is fed, is getting enough sun. Steve watches over him like he’s a dying plant rescued from the nursery, like if he only cups him in his palm and breathes enough life into him he’ll be okay again.

His recovery could be worse. It could be much, _much_ worse. Bucky is able to speak, to voice his thoughts and feelings and opinions, relearns how to demand things and how to say no. He eats well, now, without prompting from Steve, goes on jogs, can be in public without breaking down. There are bad nights, nights where he cases the apartment over and over again, where he wakes up in the middle with the shakes and can’t sleep for the next 48 hours. Sometimes he sees or smells or hears something that triggers memories of a kill—the flash of a kew collar, the smell of sumac, almost any Beatles song—and can barely function for hours at a time. But it’s better than it was, at the beginning. He sleeps wrapped around Steve like he did before the war, kisses Steve’s crown in the morning and gives his handsome devil’s smile over a plateful of eggs. He’s monumentally more stable than when they first re-met on the bridge, even than he was a couple of months ago, and Steve will never stop being grateful. But.

In the wake of all this, as Bucky becomes more independent, as he goes out with Natasha and Sam, as he stops needing Steve at every turn, a pit of sick forms in Steve’s abdomen and makes its way up his chest. It’s unfair, and he’d rather suffer for a hundred more years if it means Bucky has peace, but it’s hard. There are days he wakes up and is convinced, _absolutely convinced_ that his life is a Hydra simulation, a dream, that he was captured out of the ice and it’s still wartime in the 40’s. They let him suffer for a bit without Bucky, maybe, to test the limits of his mental endurance. Then they decided to give him back, albeit a much different version—just to see how Steve’s subconscious would react. It’s almost obvious, now, how technologically advanced they’ve been painted as in this reality, with everyone in awe over Bucky’s arm, the complicated cryogenics they had when it was certainly impossible.

It was easier to ignore when he had Bucky to take care of, but with SHIELD still rebuilding itself and therefore no missions to distract him, the sense of unreality overtakes him in his day to day. He thinks he’s fooling Bucky well enough that he’s okay—but he feels detached, the only thing anchoring him to this planet Bucky’s metal arm pressed securely across his chest at night.

-

“Steve, hey. Stevie. Baby, you gotta wake up.” Steve’s eyes feel glued shut, his limbs stiff and unresponsive. He’s on his side still, how he went to sleep, and he can feel the warmth of Bucky sitting behind him, his breath in Steve’s ear.

He grunts, though it comes out as more of a groan, and forces one of his eyes to open. “What’s wrong?” He tries, but it comes out more garbled than he expects. Steve feels one of Bucky’s hands stroke across his cheek. The gentleness makes a little bit of the tension he didn’t realize he had melt out of his body.

“You just got real stiff, sorta scared me for a second. You alright?” Steve frowns, realizes his body _aches_ , tries to relax a little. Something feels very wrong, that sick feeling back in his chest but almost tenfold. He wonders if it’s because the Hydra scientists on the outside are running experiments. Restricting his breathing to see how long he can go without air, maybe, or feeding him something through a tube that’ll make him sick. Maybe he’ll throw up in his sleep—because he’s unconscious, has to be, unless he’s totally catatonic out there. If he does he’ll choke, will they stop it? He doesn’t want to die like that, he realizes, he really doesn’t wanna suffocate again -

“Hey, _hey_ , baby, hush, it’s okay, I got you, I really got you, Stevie, relax for me.” Bucky does have him, he realizes vaguely, though it’s hard to register much when his body is like this, stiff and shaky and sweaty all at once. Bucky’s wrapped around him tight again, though they’ve moved—Steve’s back is to his chest, like how they used to sit when Steve would have attacks when he was small and couldn’t breathe right. Bucky smooths his sweaty hair off his forehead with one hand and presses the other, the metal one, to Steve’s sternum, grounding him. He whispers platitudes in Steve’s ear, warm, familiar Brooklyn tingeing his syllables.

“Can you breathe, baby? Are you breathin’ for me? Let me feel it.” Bucky’s voice is low and soothing and he presses his hand firmer to Steve’s chest. Steve manages to obey him through the blind panic, _in two three out two three_ until he stops shaking so much and reality—or what he really hopes is reality—filters slowly back in. He knows how they’re sitting, knows Bucky’s protecting him. The window is open like how they left it a couple of hours ago, and the fresh air helps knock some of the haze from Steve’s head. It smells overwhelmingly like Bucky, metal and musk and just a little bit sweet from all the Starbucks coffee he drinks. Steve can make out the chair in the corner, huge and overstuffed and soft because he likes to curl up in it in the afternoons. If he turns his head he sees the night table, with their phones and the pulp novel Bucky’s reading and a cup of water; the dresser across the room with the vanity and the little bird figurine atop it that was a gift from Sam.

It’s all familiar, almost overwhelmingly so—this is his life, this is _their_ life—and it helps him to relax in increments until he’s almost lax in Bucky’s arms. Steve feels Bucky drop a kiss atop his head, tighten his arms around his middle. He’s shaking, not as hard as Steve was, but fine tremors running down his body. He’s scared—Steve’s made him afraid, when he already has so much to deal with, it’s completely unfair for him to steal Bucky’s precious limited sleep like this.

“Buck,” he means to say but whispers instead, making a move to extricate himself from Bucky’s hold. He lets go, albeit very reluctantly. Steve can’t meet his eyes so he doesn’t turn around, just sits no more than four inches away from Bucky’s chest, knees drawn up.

“You okay?” Bucky asks, and he sounds worried, real worried. Steve is an absolute bastard—even if this Bucky is all in his head, he’s still _Bucky_.

“Yeah,” Steve lies. Bucky shouldn’t have to deal with this. “I’m real sorry for waking you up, Buck. I can, uh, go sleep on the couch if you need.” _Please don’t make me do that I can’t be without you I really need this right now._  Steve makes to get up off the bed but his legs won’t cooperate, he feels so goddamn _detached_ , why can’t he make himself _move?_

“Steve,” Bucky says, still sounding worried. “Come here.”

Steve shakes his head. His eyes burn and he forces himself to try and move again, why can’t he move?

Bucky snakes an arm around his waist, the metal one, and gently pulls Steve back over to him. “You’re really freaking me out here,” he whispers into Steve’s hair. “Can you tell me what’s wrong? Was it a nightmare? It’s okay to have those you know, I get ‘em all the time and you never make me go sleep on the couch, like hell I’d make you do it just ‘cause you’re having a bad night.” Steve breathes in deep. He doesn’t know how to explain this fear, overwhelming and all-consuming and so irrational, so insubstantial in the face of everything Bucky has been through. He needs Bucky with him on this but can’t bear the thought of making him any more worried, of planting that seed of doubt in his head when he’s doing so well.

“Yeah, Buck.” He says. His eyes burn again, and he’s glad Bucky can’t see his face from this angle—crying would give him away immediately. “Just a bad dream, is all, about the ice. I don’t really wanna talk about it, if that’s okay.” Bucky nods against Steve’s hair, presses another kiss there.

“You wanna try and go back to sleep? Or we could watch a movie off the list, if you want.” Bucky says this like he’s trying to soothe a wild animal, well-learned after months of everyone speaking to _him_ like that. Steve can’t not smile helplessly at the way Bucky’s mother hen habits followed him for seventy years all the way into the 21st century. The thought of escaping into a fictional world when his grasp on his own is so tentative makes Steve nauseous and he shakes his head.

“I think I’ll just try to sleep more. Thank you,” he adds, because he will never not be indebted to Bucky for this. Steve feels him smile against his hair, feels Bucky’s arm tighten securely around his chest. He closes his eyes.

-

The next panic attack is less conveniently placed. Steve is in a meeting with Fury and Stark and various other former SHIELD agents that had been vetted to hell and back. He’s looking out the window, feeling vaguely guilty that he isn't contributing more but lacking the energy to do so. A bird flies by languidly, letting air flow through its wings and carry it across the length of the windows. It looks like a crow, black and sleek. It’s gone within a few seconds and he attempts to return his attention to the meeting.

“—it’s easy to see how this could be a problem, but I believe the answer definitely lies in training,” an agent is saying. Steve glances out the window again and sees a bird, sleek and black, languidly gliding past, eerily similar to the first bird. Steve frowns. Is this the kind of thing that would happen if he really were in some simulation devised by Hydra, or deep in a coma from being fished out of the arctic? That’s how it was in the movie Clint made him watch last year, how sometimes if you see two things that are very similar it’s a sort of screw-up.

He doesn’t wanna be trapped in a Hydra sim. He doesn’t want to be in this meeting—he wants to be home, with Bucky, in their familiar home. There is no Bucky here, and this building is far from familiar, an anonymous skyscraper Maria commissioned. Where is Bucky? He needs Bucky, needs to feel that arm wrapped around him, needs the smell and the taste of him.

Steve’s shaking, he realizes, and his stomach hurts, he feels like he’s having an asthma attack but there’s no Bucky to make sure he doesn’t choke, this time. There’s just Stark, looking at him, mouth downturned and eyebrows drawn up in worry. Fury, head tilted, reaching out towards him, the blood rushing in his ears. His breath rasps in his throat and it hurts _,_ deep in his chest, like someone is sitting on him in the outside. It’s bad. Steve feels very wrong.

He feels arms on his shoulders, trying to ground him—and they’re not as good as metal but they’re better than nothing. There’s a cup held his lips, water, and he reaches up a shaking hand to grasp at it and bring it to his lips. The feeling in his chest and stomach subsides within the first few sips but he still feels _off_ , like the world is titled very subtly on its axis.

“Rogers,” Fury is saying, and Steve blinks.

Stark raises an eyebrow at him, but it’s not condescending. It’s worried. He made _Tony Stark_ worried. This must not be reality after all.

“I’m fine,” he manages to get out, but he can tell it’s not convincing. “Where’s Bucky?” He knows he should know, but he can’t remember much of the day up to this point and is almost afraid to try.

“Jarvis says Barnes is at home, right where you left him,” Stark says, and Steve breathes a little easier. “Want me to get him up here?”

The thought makes Steve feel like an absolute bastard. Bucky’s day shouldn’t be interrupted because of him. “Nah,” he says. “I think I’ll just excuse myself if that’s okay, sir.” He directs this at Fury, who stares him down for a good ten seconds before giving a nod.

Steve manages to make it out of the 'scraper and catch a taxi back to his and Bucky’s apartment, checks his appearance in the side mirror before he gets out to make sure he doesn’t look like he just had a lapse of sanity in a meeting discussing things ten times more important than him. He looks mostly fine, if a little pale, if his hair sticks to his forehead a bit with sweat, if he’s breathing sort of hard.

Bucky, of course, notices it all.

“Hey,” he says, and Steve can tell he’s trying and failing to keep the worry out of his voice. His hair’s up in a bun on the top of his head, little wisps falling out and around his face, and he’s clad in sweatpants and one of those long sleeved shirts he likes to wear so much, sleeves pushed up to the elbow to reveal his forearms. His face is flushed and his bottom lip is red, like he’s been worrying at it with his teeth. Steve has never wanted anyone or anything so badly in his life.

“Bucky,” he says, and tries and fails to feel embarrassed at the fact that it comes out as nearly a whine. There’s two things he can think of that will bring him back down to earth, keep him grounded—either getting the shit beat out of him, which he knows Bucky won’t do, or get fucked through the mattress, which Steve is positive he _will._

Suddenly this feels like a cure-all, like if he gets Bucky inside him he’ll be fixed, he’ll come back to himself for good and it’ll prove there’s no way he’s stuck inside his own head.

Bucky’s eyes darken and he closes the distance between them, since Steve has made no move to. “Yeah, doll? You need somethin’ from me?” Steve wants to cry all of a sudden because Bucky _knows_ what he needs, he always knows.

Steve kisses him, makes it greedy, lets Bucky fuck his mouth with his tongue. He brings his metal hand up to clutch at Steve’s hair, tilt his head this way and that to get the best angle. Steve feels like he’s whining almost sub-vocally at this point, feels himself clench and unclench where he feels so empty. Bucky slips his flesh hand down the back of his pants and circles a finger there, around his hole. It’s dry, and it feels more grounding than any of the exercises the SHIELD-appointed therapist made him do, back when they had one.

“You want it in you?” Bucky rasps against his lips. Steve nods fervently, cries out at the feeling of Bucky’s hand on him there. “You need it?”

“Yeah,” Steve says. “Yeah, I need it.”

“Alright, sweetheart. Alright, baby.” Bucky bites at his lip then soothes the hurt with his tongue. “I’ll give it to you. But after we’re gonna talk, alright? You’re gonna tell me what’s -”

“Aw, Buck, come on, don’t make me -"

Bucky digs his metal fingers into his scalp, presses his finger harder against Steve’s hole so it burns. His breath escapes him in a rush.

“ _After_ ,” Bucky says, and he isn’t messing around, here, “you’re gonna tell me what’s wrong. You’re gonna tell me and we’re gonna get it worked out, ‘cause I can see my best guy isn’t doin’ too hot.” Steve feels his eyes burn, feels tears leak out, realizes he could honestly care less if this is real or not at this point. Whatever’s waiting for him outside can’t possibly be as good as this, now, with Bucky taking care of him like no one else can.

Bucky moves both hands up to his face and runs his thumbs under Steve’s eyes. He looks worried again, but Steve can feel him hard and hot and heavy against his hip and knows he’s really gonna get it, even if he has to talk later.

They maneuver their way into the bedroom, Steve clinging onto Bucky and the metal arm wrapped firmly around Steve’s waist. Bucky gets him on his back on the bed, strips off both their clothes and then stops for a minute, just looking at him.

“You’re gorgeous, you know?” Bucky leans down and presses kisses, awfully tender, against the lids of Steve’s closed eyes, his flushed cheeks. Works his way down onto his clavicles, mouths sweetly at his nipples. Steve’s chest heaves with it. “My beautiful guy,” Bucky whispers against Steve’s belly.

He drags himself up and reaches over Steve to their night table for the lube, slicks up two fingers and sinks them both inside at once. Steve goes breathless and hot all over and his dick strains up against his belly. Everywhere Bucky has touched him, everywhere he is touching him burns absolutely, keeping him real, keeping him here.

Bucky stretches him quickly but lovingly, carefully, rubbing his thumb up against Steve’s perineum when he gets his ring finger in. He continues his journey down Steve’s body, nuzzles into the crease of his thigh and giving kitten licks to the head of Steve’s cock. When Bucky sinks down onto it, letting the head hit the back of his throat, Steve squeezes his eyes shut and thrashes his head, moaning loud and feeling tears snake down the side of his face.

“Buck,” he gasps, and Bucky pulls off to coo at him.

“I know, baby.” He works his pinkie in alongside his other fingers, rips another groan from Steve’s throat.

“Buck, Bucky, _God_ , fuck, please,” Bucky shushes him, pulls his fingers out and aligns the blunt head of his cock with Steve’s hole. Steve can’t see it from here but can imagine it well enough, thick and dripping, foreskin pulled back to reveal his purpling head, _fuck_. He can tell how hard Bucky is from the way he feels pushing against his sensitive hole.

Steve presses his calves tight to Bucky’s ribs, squeezing hard, hoping he’s not hurting him but unable to let go even a bit. He feels broken up inside, all scattered into pieces with Bucky’s cock in him and the arm securely around him the only things holding him together.

Steve reaches down to find Bucky’s left hand, secured around his hip, and lace their fingers together.

“Oh _baby_ ,” Bucky chokes out, and holds on tighter. He fucks Steve slow, just how he likes, punching the air out of him with each thrust. He rests his forehead against Steve’s and presses little kisses to his lips, sweet. “You really needed this, huh?”

Steve nods. He can’t keep his eyes open, he’s so close. “Buck,” he gasps out. “I really, I really need,” he tries to finish but can’t remember where his train of thought was going. Bucky picks up the pace.

“What d’you need’, Stevie? You need my cock? You need my come, huh? You need to feel it drippin’ outta you?”

Steve comes, hard, cries out into Bucky’s mouth and clutches at his metal hand so hard he’d of broken it for sure if it was the organic one.

He comes and comes, Bucky still thrusting into him, and when Bucky comes too it forces more tears out of him, feeling the heat all up in him like that, feeling where they’re one person.

Bucky doesn’t pull out, stays there inside of Steve even as he softens up a little. He lays on Steve’s chest, foreheads still pressed together, metal arm wrapped securely around Steve’s middle.

They come down from it for a long time, so long that Steve looks outside and notices it’s starting to get dark out. Time feels fake, right now, another symptom of being inside, he supposes.

“Steve,” Bucky says softly, looking serious. Steve closes his eyes again so he doesn’t have to see where he’s made Bucky upset.

“I feel like maybe,” Steve starts. Bucky waits patiently for him to finish, breathing steady against him. Steve feels his own pick up rapidly, feels himself start to get cold. “Like maybe I, I didn’t wake up after all, you know, and maybe this is all,” he swallows, and he can tell from Bucky’s face that he doesn’t like where this is going.

“Like maybe this is all in my head, you know? I mean, there’s aliens and all, and it’s 2015, Buck, and you ain’t dead, and Stark’s son is a billionaire genius.” Steve laughs, a little manically. Bucky doesn’t laugh.

“Steve,” he says, real soft. “You been feelin’ like this and didn’t tell me?” He sounds hurt, Steve realizes, and he immediately feels like the worst person alive.

“I’m sorry, I just.” Steve closes his eyes. “I didn’t want to.. burden you. Or try and make it seem like my problems were on the same level as yours, I suppose.” Steve keeps his eyes closed but feels Bucky take a deep breath against him.

“Steve,” he says, and he’s real serious now. “Look at me.” Steve does. “You weren’t a burden when you were so weak you couldn’t get to the john by yourself and you’re sure as fuck not a burden now.” Bucky reaches up to grasp Steve’s face in both hands. “You’re the only person on this entire goddamned fucking planet who knows me, Steve. The only goddamn one. What makes you think I wouldn’t go through Hell for you?” Steve doesn’t respond.

“Baby,” Bucky says, soft now. “We gotta get you some help.” Steve shrugs.

“I was seein’ someone, before SHIELD collapsed. She helped a little.” Bucky frowns.

“And after? Why haven’t you asked Sam to set you up with someone? I’m sure he knows—oh.” Steve looks at his eyes from where he’d been distracted by Bucky’s mouth. “You had to deal with me,” he says, understanding now, and Steve can hear the anger in his voice—though he’s sure it’s pointed inwards rather than at Steve.

“Buck,” he says, and it’s his turn to be firm, now. He wraps his legs tighter around Bucky’s waist and squeezes his metal bicep, hard. “I think dealing with you was the only thing keepin’ me sane until now,” he admits. Bucky’s expression softens at that.

“We’re real fuckin’ pieces of work, aren’t we?” He asks. Steve snorts.

“Yeah, Buck, we’re practically made for each other, with all this crazy.”

Bucky smiles soft, if not still a little worried, kisses him on the mouth like it’s a secret. Regardless of whether it’s all in his head or not, Steve, for a minute, can definitively say that this, here, is as real as it gets.  

**Author's Note:**

> i find it incredibly unrealistic that steve had no paranoia about his world potentially being a hydra mindfuck, and i haven't seen many people write about it, so.


End file.
